13 Research Skills

This chapter teaches you what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. After that, you’ll learn how to quote, summarize and paraphrase resources, and how to cite your sources, Chicago style.

Avoiding Plagiarism

Plagiarism is presenting other people’s content as your own, or using other people’s content without proper attribution. In school, plagiarism includes reusing work that you’ve already submitted for grading.

Watch Avoiding Plagiarism to understand plagiarism and how to avoid it.

8 Types of Plagiarism

Mediasmarts, a Canadian organization dedicated to digital and media literacy, describes these types of plagiarism^[1]:

1. “Cloning: handing in work entirely copied from (or written by) someone else
2. Find and Replace: copying work but changing some words or phrases
3. Control-C: mixing your work with copied work, and not giving credit and proper citations
4. Hybrid: mixing your work with copied work, only giving citations for some of the copied work
5. Remixing: rewriting someone else’s work in your own words and stitching it together so it looks original
6. Mash-Up: mixing different unattributed sources and presenting them as your own work
7. Recycling: re-using your own work and presenting it as new
8. 404 Error: making up quotes or research and citing them to sources that don’t exist” ^[2]

Quoting, Paraphrasing and Summarizing

When you want to include information from a resource, you can quote it, paraphrase it or summarize it. Watch Quoting, Paraphrasing & Summarizing. (Please note: The video was selected because it’s a clear and easy to understand explanation of quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing. However, it uses a different style of citation than we use in this course. We use Chicago style citations, which you’ll learn in this chapter.)

Quotations

Quotations use the author’s words, exactly as they were written or spoken. We add quotation marks at the start and end of the quote. In Chicago style citations, the quotation is followed by a superscript number. This is part of the citation and will be described in the next section.

For example:

Original: Although the gender gap in educational attainment favours women, gender imbalances vary widely by degree level and discipline. Women continue to be significantly underrepresented in high-earning STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields.^[3]

Quotation: “Although the gender gap in educational attainment favours women, gender imbalances vary widely by degree level and discipline. Women continue to be significantly underrepresented in high-earning STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields.”^[4]

Try to keep quotations short, especially in reports for school. A good limit is about 100 words. Most of your report should be in your own words; it’s not acceptable to submit a report that’s mostly quotes.

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is rewriting information in your own words. The goal is to present the key points in your own words, and in the order you would use. Don’t simply change some words in each sentence. (That’s plagiarism.) When paraphrasing:

1. Keep the original meaning but put it in your own words.
2. Don’t just change a few words! Create new sentences, put the ideas in a different order, and use words and phrases that you normally use.
3. Cite your source.

For example:

Original: Although the gender gap in educational attainment favours women, gender imbalances vary widely by degree level and discipline. Women continue to be significantly underrepresented in high-earning STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields. Just as gender inequities are present in post-secondary attainment, they are also evident in labour force participation and outcomes, with women consistently underrepresented in senior leadership positions. The structural barriers and gaps to post-secondary education and work are wider yet for Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, LGBTQ2S, and racialized Canadians.^[5]

Paraphrased: Indigenous people, LGBTQ2S, people with mental and physical disabilities, and people of colour face significant barriers to higher education and professional employment. Gender inequalities are another problem; women are still underrepresented in STEM programs and C-suite positions, despite typically outperforming men scholastically. ^[6]

Summarizing

Summarizing shortens the original content and presents it in your own words.

For example:

Original: Although the gender gap in educational attainment favours women, gender imbalances vary widely by degree level and discipline. Women continue to be significantly underrepresented in high-earning STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields. Just as gender inequities are present in post-secondary attainment, they are also evident in labour force participation and outcomes, with women consistently underrepresented in senior leadership positions. The structural barriers and gaps to post-secondary education and work are wider yet for Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, LGBTQ2S, and racialized Canadians.^[7]

Summarized: Despite doing better in school than men, women are underrepresented in STEM programs and high-level professional positions. Indigenous people, racialized people, LGBTQ2S and people with disabilities have even harder times succeeding at school and in the workplace.^[8]

Citations

Watch How to Cite in Chicago Style (Ignore the word Turabian)

What are Citations?

When you write a report or give a presentation, you typically use information from sources other than your own experience. For example, if you write that the population of Canada is 37 million, you probably got that information from a source—you didn’t go out and count every person in the country.

Whenever you use information from a source other than your own experience, you need to cite the source.

Why are Citations Important?

A citation tells the reader or listener:

• That you did not create the information yourself
• That you’re using real information, not something you made up
• That your sources are valid and trustworthy
• Where you got the information
• Where to find more information

When Do I Include a Citation?

When you include information that you did not create, you can quote it, paraphrase it, or summarize it. No matter which you choose, you must always cite the source.

The only time you don’t need to cite information is when it’s from your own experience, or is considered common knowledge.

What to Cite:

• Words, ideas, images, charts, graphs, video, audio, conversations
• Content that you found online, including podcasts and social media posts
• Course material

You Don’t Need to Cite:

• Your own experiences, thoughts and ideas
• Your own art: images, art, recordings or photos that you made
• Common knowledge

How Do I Cite?

In Business, we use Chicago Style Citations. Chicago Style uses footnotes and a Bibliography.

Footnotes

At the end of the information you’re citing, add a footnote. The footnote has two parts:

1. A superscript number at the end of the content you’re citing. (Looks like this: ¹)
2. The footnote at the bottom of the page. Footnotes vary depending on what kind of source you used: webpage, book, academic journal or personal conversation. Use one of these resources to find the correct formatting.

A Chicago style footnote for a website uses this format:

Footnote number. Author’s Firstname Author’s Lastname, “Article Title,” Website Name, last modified (or accessed on) date, URL.

For example:

1. Martin Turcotte, “Volunteering and Charitable Giving in Canada,” Statistics Canada, last modified April 15, 2016, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-652-x/89-652-x2015001-eng.htm.

You can see more examples of footnotes at the bottom of this page.

Tip: To add a footnote in Word or Googledocs, click “Insert footnote,” then enter the citation information. The superscript number automatically appears, linked to the footnote at the bottom of the page. (The footnotes will update automatically if you move content or add citations.)

Bibliography

Chicago style citations include a bibliography. The bibliography is a list, on the last page of your document, of all the sources you cited. Sources are listed alphabetically by last name, with a space between each source.

Chicago style bibliography sources look very similar to footnotes, except:

• The author’s last name goes first
• Periods replace the commas
• Sources aren’t numbered

For example:

 Activity 

?? 

 Worksheet 

Please complete and submit the Research Skills Worksheet

 Activity 

Are you ready for the Canadian workplace? Test your knowledge in the Business Cultural Norms Quiz.